Significantly, the findings did not suggest that users of mephedrone – which Measham said was sometimes referred to as M-Cat, but was only called meow meow by newspapers – switched to other legal highs when the drug was made illegal.

A belief that mephedrone would usurp ecstasy has not been realised, according to the Lancaster study, which found evidence that the former "legal high", also called "meow", has supplemented, "rather than displaced, ecstasy use among ecstasy users".